Oil burners are believed to be understood from the general related art. They have a combustion air blower integrated into the burner and, in particular in low-output burners, the heating oil is ignited under low load. In systems, in particular large combustion systems which use oils that are more difficult to ignite, such as heavy heating oil, a separate gas-fired pilot burner is used. In general, the liquid fuel needs to be atomized as finely as possible in the combustion chamber to obtain a large surface for the combustion reaction. For emissions reasons, the aim is to achieve a long dwell time and as low a combustion temperature as possible to achieve good total combustion while emitting little nitrogen oxide. The following types of atomization are generally known in oil burners: pressure atomization, rotary atomization and atomization using an atomizing medium. The temperature prevailing in a mixing zone is decisive for the efficiency of an oil burner.
In particular, in the case of combustion systems in buildings it is important to modulate a burner in order to adjust the combustion output to the best possible extent to the instantaneous heat demand of the connected heating circuits. This will result in long operating times, few burner starts, and good efficiency due to effective utilization of the gross calorific value in gas condensing boilers.